


mother knows best

by punkrockbadger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Motherhood, photo albums
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3178784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrockbadger/pseuds/punkrockbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“When I grow up”, Ginny declares, at the tender age of six, “I won’t write down everything that my kids do.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	mother knows best

“When I grow up”, Ginny declares, at the tender age of six, “I won’t write down _everything_ that my kids do.”

She is looking through shoeboxes of photos for treasure, finding her first moments and first smiles sandwiched between moments of her brothers, and wonders why her mother keeps all of these. Her first tooth is tucked in between Fred and George’s first explosion (they were five and playing with something called a “toaster” that Daddy had brought home) and Ron learning to put his jumper on without help (he was two and more than old enough already, in Ginny’s opinion). There must be thousands of photographs tucked away in these shoeboxes, the time spans they contain carefully labeled down to the months on their lids, and Ginny shudders at the thought.

She will not be one of those mothers.

She is six, too young to be wondering about motherhood at all, but when her mother laughs, says she will know better when she holds a child of her own, Ginny rolls her eyes. Her mother is always right, every single time, but this time, Ginny will beat her at her own game.

And Ginny grows up, slowly at first, then with the pace of a boulder rolling down a hill. There are dark times and happy times and times she would rather not remember, but they are all uniquely good in their own ways. And she saves them all in photographs (not diaries, never diaries)-- photographs she hangs on the walls of the first apartment she gets with Harry. It's a small place, but she pays the first months' rent with her own paycheck and _lets_ her boyfriend move in when he asks (nicely, of course). He understands that it's her space, and comes and goes until there is more staying than going happening on both of their parts. And then the pictures go up. Some of them move and some of them don't, and if she is telling secrets, she likes the ones that stay still better. They hang there, frozen snapshots of a moment, and let her remember the feeling instead of the actions.

She mixes them up by order, hangs eleven year old Ginny in George's too big sweater up next to twenty year old Harry with his arm around a still too tall for the picture Hagrid, creates a jumbled up story that looks almost comical in its disorganized nature, and treasures every piece of her history that she digs up. They are all pieces of her, little steps that have lead up to this person she is still growing into, and she wants all of them displayed, mistakes and victories. She wants everyone to see where she has come from, and all those places she still needs to go. Harry gets it, that need to keep pushing forward, and they take so many pictures together that the apartment nearly fills to bursting with all the memories they've saved up.

And then, James is born.

James is born, with nary a trace of Weasley in him until he opens his big, brown eyes, after a pregnancy that should not have gone as badly as it did, and he is breathing softly in her arms despite all odds. Truly Ginny's son, Molly Weasley says with tears in her eyes, and Ginny laughs, rocking James just slightly to lull the fussing baby back into the safety of sleep. And she realizes what her mother said, all those years ago, about her changing her mind when she had a child of her own. Ginny wants everything saved-- wants James to look back when he is old and (hopefully) tall and be able to flip through everything from his first breaths to his Hogwarts graduation in albums. She wants him to have every piece of who he is, just like she does, and she is glad to find, when she wakes up, that James' first family photo is one of the three of them together.

She runs her fingers over it after they have come home, sees Harry slumped on her right shoulder as James yawns, head tipped back just enough that his hair brushes the skin of her upper arm. James is asleep in his crib, only three feet away, and she longs to hold him again, to recreate it.

"We have forever now." Harry speaks up, from where he's been leaning against the door way. "To keep making things like this happen."

He tosses a still plastic wrapped photo album at her. She catches it effortlessly, rolling her eyes at him as he shrugs, and tears the plastic off. It's red leather, soft and smooth, and she opens it carefully, tucking the photo into the first slot.

It's a beginning, for the three of them, and Harry smiles as she shuts it.


End file.
